About block 950,000
Bitcoin block 950,000 was mined by ViaBTC on May 18, 2026 at 9:54 PM UTC, 2 min 33 s after block 949,999. That is faster than the 10-minute average the network aims for: blocks come in bursts because finding one is pure chance.
It confirmed 639 transactions in 0.58 MB (22.3% of the 4 million weight-unit limit). The median transaction paid 2.00 sat/vB, and all fees added up to 0.0050 BTC. With the 3.125 BTC subsidy of halving era 5, ViaBTC earned 3.1300 BTC for this block.
Block 950,000 is number 465 of 2,016 in difficulty epoch 471; 1,551 blocks remain until the next difficulty adjustment at block 951,551. The next halving is at block 1,050,000, 100,000 blocks after this one.
Its hash starts with 19 zeros: that is the proof of work, a number below the target that the whole network’s hashrate had to search for. ViaBTC found 96 blocks in the week before. Today the block has 25,640 confirmations, so it is settled beyond any practical doubt.
Why block 950,000 is notable
Height 950,000 is a round milestone, one of the multiples of 10,000 that mark the chain’s progress. Consensus rules ignore round numbers, so nodes checked this block exactly like its neighbours, but heights like this are useful reference points. It arrived 17.4 years after the genesis block of 3 January 2009, an average of 9 min 37 s per block across the whole chain up to that point. From here, 50,000 blocks remained to block 1,000,000: about 347 days at the 10-minute target.
Of the 3.12998611 BTC that ViaBTC collected for this block, 3.125 BTC was new subsidy and 0.00498611 BTC came from fees, 0.2% of the total; leaving out the coinbase, its 638 transactions paid about 782 sats each on average.
Countdown to block 1,000,000 →
What’s inside a Bitcoin block
Every block, 950,000 included, is made of the same parts:
- Header
- Eighty bytes that miners hash over and over: the version, the hash of the previous block, the Merkle root that summarises every transaction, a timestamp, the difficulty target in compact form and a nonce. A block is valid when the hash of its header falls below the target.
- Coinbase transaction
- The first transaction, written by the miner. It spends no inputs: it creates the subsidy and collects the fees, and since BIP 34 it must also record the block height.
- Transactions
- Everything else in the block: payments taken from the mempool, usually picked by fee rate because space is capped at 4 million weight units. Block 950,000 holds 639, counting the coinbase.
- Fees
- The difference between what each transaction spends and what it creates. The miner claims them in the coinbase; they are the part of the reward set by demand rather than by the protocol.
- Subsidy
- New bitcoin created by the block, fixed by the halving schedule: 50 BTC at the start, halved every 210,000 blocks. At height 950,000 it is 3.125 BTC.